Sunday, 9 March 2014

DREAMS ON THE EDGE OF TIME

Timeline
were formed in 2006 in the province of Bergamo on the initiative of
Davide Tasca and Claudio Albergoni. The name of the band refers to a
famous novel by Michael Crichton were the borders between past and
present get blurred and their dream was to start a new creative
experience composing original music influenced by progressive rock
and metal. After a demo in 2009 and a good live activity on the local
scene, in 2013 they self released an interesting début album titled
New Dreams... New Hopes with a line up featuring Claudio
Albergoni (guitar), Davide Tasca (bass), Daniele Cattaneo
(keyboards), Stefano Bruzzi (drums) and Maurizio Jacopo Andriolo
(vocals). The result of their efforts is a good mix of influences
ranging from the classic masters of prog from the seventies to newer
bands with a sharper edge.

The
nice opener “The Birth Of Man” is a long, complex suite divided
into three parts. It's sung in English and the music and lyrics deal
with environmental issues depicting in a visionary way the evolution
of humankind. It begins with The Creation Of The Earth, an
instrumental part featuring an excellent interaction between
keyboards and guitars that leads to the middle section, Mother
Gaia, where the Earth appears like a beautiful, colourful entity
from space, queen of the world. On account of her boredom she gives
birth to Man. The final part, The Human Singularity, tells
about the evolution of humankind: from ape to man, from fire to
writing... But things go wrong and men, blinded by greediness and
power end up tearing apart their creator.

“La
mia falsa guida” (My false guide) is a short track sung in Italian
that describes a metaphoric journey through Hell. There are some
references to Dante Alighieri and his Divine Comedy but there's no
dark wood here and this Hell is real, it's just ordinary life on
Earth. The protagonist gets lost and there's no Virgil to lead him
along his journey to the centre of a hell that is wilder and deeper
than you can imagine... “Where is my guide? She is invisible / The
more I look for her the more I feel her glance distant from me...”.

“Wret2”
is a dark instrumental full of energy that leads to the following
“Searching The Precious Smile”, a track featuring sharp guitar
riffs and metal influences. It describes in music and words a
frenzied, nervous quest through the streets of a big city for the
most precious treasure... a smile! Then comes the reflective “Moments
Of Life”, a kind of short mini suite divided into five parts where
the mind flies through forgotten memories and the past emerges from
some old pictures.

The
long, complex “Un gioco di fiducia” (A play of trust) is my
favourite track on the album. It's a beautiful suite sung in Italian
and divided into four parts that in some way tells about the
thaumaturgic power of friendship and trust, a power that can save you
from the threatening, raging seas of life that can submerge you and
hurt you so bad to transform you in a solitary castaway. In my
opinion it's a real pity that the band didn't exploit more their
native language since the vocalist seems more at ease when singing in
Italian and the poetical, evocative force of the lyrics here is
stronger than ever.

Then
comes the anti-militaristic “Wake up... New Black Dawn” that is
divided into two parts. The first part is full of positive energy and
describes a new day under the sky of freedom while the second part is
darker and depicts a new, gloomy day where the masters of war rule
and you're living a nightmare under a bloody sky of slavery and
contempt. The conclusive track, “The Way Of Respect”, is in the
same mood and tells in music and lyrics the feelings of a men who was
injured during a bomb attack where a girl got killed.

On
the whole, I think that this work is really worth listening to and
that Timeline have a good potential. Anyway, you can legally download
the album and the nice booklet from the official website: so, have a
try and judge by yourselves!